The Press Box - The Bad Art Friend and Covering Urban Meyer

Episode Date: October 11, 2021

Bryan and David break down Robert Kolker's story "Who Is the Bad Art Friend?" and weigh in on the moral arguments posed by the story (6:48). Later, they discuss how the media covered the Urban Meyer video (38:55) and answer more Listener Mail. Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline.  Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's me, Brian Curtis, host of the press box. And I'm his co-host, David Shoemaker. And we wanted to get together today to tell you about one of our favorite podcasts on the network, the ringer wrestling show. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, David, you can't talk about your own podcast as one of your favorites. Let me do the rest of this. The ringer wrestling show is your guide for all things pro wrestling. And this month, they're talking about all your favorite weekly wrestling shows, plus pay-per-views. You can find the ringer wrestling show on Spotify or where.

ever you get your podcast. I think that's right. David, what's on your mind today? Well, I was going through my notes of things I desperately wanted to talk to you about. We can talk about some of this stuff. But, you know, Bomani Jones just announced, and he's got a late night show on HBO coming, which is, I don't really know what we have to talk about about it,

except just we could fantasy book it, and our ideas would definitely be less good than whatever they're going to do the show so we so i'm going to put a pin in that for now right and then i'm so i'm looking down my notes and i see oh we got to talk about katie nolan she's left espn too and interestingly enough she auditioned for that show according to her own twitter account right so i was like well this is a little bit inside baseball i apologize to our listeners but i was like well who else is this is is this a topic of discussion or are these all like distressed assets that ispn is letting go that are certainly going to be worth more wherever they end up and i just started

Googling ESPN talent to run through their roster to see who I think is being most underutilized. All of this is a preamble, okay? Okay. So I Google the words ESPN talent. Before I even get to looking what I'm looking for, my eye is immediately drawn to the People Also Ask section of the Google search, you know, where they just have like related questions. So I'm going to ask you some people also ask questions and let me see if you have any idea

what the answer is. All right? Okay. What does ESPN stand for? I'm going to start easy here. Entertainment and Sports Network. What's the P? Uh, programming? Yes. Programming network. All right. God. If I didn't know that, we would, uh, we would have a little bit. Now, some of the, and listen, I'm not saying that any of these answers are right. By the way, I'm not even saying they're all even in the remote of the right ballpark. Okay. But they give one answer to this question. Who has been at ESPN the longest? Um, if you're asking Google, these questions. This is what Google will tell you. I mean, Dick Vital is 79 or 80. I'll give you a hint. This is studio talent. Who's the studio? Berman and Dick Vital, I'd say it'd be the longest.

Well, that's actually, I'm sure Dick Vitale is correct. But the answer that they give is Linda Cohn. I guess she's the longest serving sports center anchor. All right. Yeah. Let's get us. That's not right. Okay. Okay. This one's more fun. Who is the highest paid sports announcer? Not ESPN specific. who is the highest paid sports announcer according to a completely unverifiable Google search. I love these questions because these are just kind of...

This is what people want. This is what we should be covering on the show. Yeah, we're also inside. And these are kind of normie sports media questions. So it's not Tony Romo is not the... He was actually why the article, I think, that's being quoted here is written because his Romo's deal was coming up.

But no, it's a... It's somebody who has previously been a very notable ESPN figure, but is probably better known for radio. So wait, I'm guessing, I'm guessing now who Google or some computer brain has chosen as the possibly incorrect answer to this question? Yeah. He's known for radio? Radio and TV.

Radio and TV. So like Dan Levitart? Close. Earlier iteration, Jim Rome, apparently, according to 2019, made $30 million in all of his endeavors, all right? Now, this is better stuff. There's a lot of great questions. Normie questions, you're right.

What is Terry Bradshaw's salary? Who is the richest sportscaster? I'm not sure how you get an answer for that. Okay. Here's the question. Who was fired from ESPN? There is one answer. The top result.

Who was fired from ESPN? I'll give you a hint. It happened in April of this year. Let's see if you remember. April of this year who was fired from ESPN. For the record, the question is just who was fired from ESPN. The answer it gives was April. I'm sorry, my media.

I'm a little cloudy on this. Who was the particular person this April? Paul Pierce, after his racing Instagram live video. One last one. One last one. Who could forget? Paul Pierce. Again, this is a broad question.

Could mean a lot of things, but there is one answer, the top answer that Google provides. The question is, Who is the lady on ESPN? And it's not Linda Cohn? It's not double-dipping here? No, no. Think about highest-rated shows. It's on first take.

Yeah, Molly Karen Rose. That's correct. Molly is the lady on ESPN. That's all I got for you, man. I just thought it's really funny to look and see what people care about. You know, it's funny. And next time I think I need a sports media column, I've been going way to

way to inside baseball this is not what people care about people care about who makes the most money and who is the lady on ESPN All right one more I know you I know you had a card bonus this was not planned I know because you had this conversation with

Rusillo earlier about you know career paths and whatnot there is a WikiHow question on how to work for ESPN how do you become an ESPN writer it says a degree in broadcasting or journalism would be a good background the technical degrees such as electrical engineering

would help behind the scene support roles with ESP. I have no idea why people are Google. I'm glad people are interested though. It is. The answer should be your podcast with Rosillo, I think. Well, there you go. He had a very particular path, but yes, he could offer a very interesting way to get in.

Coming up on a day show, David, we discussed the amazing bad art friend story in the New York Times magazine. We also talk about how the media covered Urban Myers' overtime session at a bar. I am convinced this is a media story as much as it is a football story. All that more on the press box, a part of the ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers.

Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker and producer Erica Servantes here. And I really feel I failed the sports media literacy quiz. I was all prepared to talk about bad art friend with you. And I'm thinking, what does ESPN stand for again? Sorry, I thought that would be a layup just to get you going. No, no, it is good. I just feel like I'm turning the car around. Speaking of bad art friend, David, this definitely falls in, I don't know where you are on this,

but for me, in the category of story where I saw everybody tweeting about it, I had not read it, I was confused, and then I saw the meta tweets from the likes of Corey Seca, and I was really confused. Like, we'd done two or three rounds on Twitter before I actually understood what the story was about. Oh, yeah. It is a story in the New York Times Magazine. It's written by Robert Coker. I will argue that this is a really good story. I saw some people wondering why this was in the Times Magazine.

Man, I don't have that problem. Should we run through some of the basics here? And I want you to jump in a lot. Before we get going, two things. One, to just address the two things you said up front. I mean, I think something can both be a good story. And people could ask what is doing the New York Times Magazine, right? I mean, you could write, I don't know.

Well, if something's beautifully written, I guess it has a place in a magazine of that nature. But I'm not saying this doesn't deserve to be there. I'm just saying those could be different things, right? And I think that there is a sort of intrinsic question about this or sort of like the larger genre of mind-bending interpersonal publishing relationships that have sort of taken hold that is a big question that we can get into. Two, yes, this was deeply confusing. The one, the thing that, the, the way that I was confused was not on Twitter, but was in ringer slack. And every time a story of this nature pops up, the book slack is the only, it's the only time it lights up. And just the stalwarts of this genre, Alison Herman, Rob Harvilla, Claire McNier, I'm talking all you guys.

Just start going nuts. And there's nothing more anxiety. producing for me, than like really wanting to be involved in the conversation and then clicking and realizing it's going to take me a really long time to read it and I don't have time. And I'm watching Slack and I guess Twitter pass me. That is a very modern condition, isn't it?

Like I want to participate in this Slack conversation, but this magazine piece is really long. And I don't have time to read it right now. I do find it funny when people consume a piece and then tweet endlessly or Slack endlessly about it. And then there's this whole. like, what is this piece doing here? It's like, you just read it, and now you're reacting to it constantly.

Yes. You're kind of answering the question, even if your caveat about publishing stories is well taken. All right. The facts. For anybody who has not ventured into bad art friend territory, in 2015, David, a woman named Don Donald donated one of her kidneys. This was a non-directed donation, meaning Donorland didn't know who was going to get the kidney. she was doing it out of altruism.

Now, Don Dorland started a private Facebook group about her kidney donation. And on this private Facebook group, she wrote an open letter to the as yet unknown recipient of her kidney. Throughout my preparation for becoming a donor, dot, dot, dot, dot, I focused a majority of my mental energy on imagining and celebrating you.

That letter will become very important as we get into this story. Now, one of the members she invited to her kidney donation Facebook group was a woman named Sonia Larson, a fiction writer who was part of the same writers community in Boston. In 2015, Larson and Dornland had an email exchange. I'm going to quote Culker here. Dorland, I think you're aware that I donated my kidney this summer, right? Only then did Larson gush. Ah, yes, I did see on Facebook that you donated your kidney. What a tremendous thing.

Afterward, Dorlin would wonder, if she really thought it was that great, why did she need reminding that it happened? Dorlin would later learn from a friend that Sonia Larson had written a fictional story involving kidney donation, which was inspired, at least partly, by Dorlin's own donation. and Dorlin would think, well, it's kind of weird she didn't mention this to me.

As Dorlin would later write on Facebook, I discovered that a writer friend has based a short story on something momentous I did in my own life without telling me or even intending to tell me. Translation, David,

who are you to get fiction out of my kidney donation without first giving me a heads up? Do you want to jump in here? I was wondering, there was a moment there where I thought you were just going to,

that that introduction was going to take 45 minutes because there's so much detail in the story and it's hard to sort of parse it out. It's actually really hard. The story was really well written. And one of the ways you know that is it's really hard to do it justice in any sort of synopsis or abbreviated form.

You know, the piece got through all the points. Except I think that the only question, I mean, the only issue I have, add with it was the sort of legal and moral issue at the core of this, right? It's not at the core. The core is probably somewhere 10 miles west of that. But there is this question to whether or not if you write something and post it on Facebook in earnest, which is to say this thing is a found document or a piece of nonfiction or

whatever. And then someone else says, I'm inspired by this. And I think it's significant to say that, like, I find this ridiculous. on its face, and I am going to turn this into a short story or novel or screenplay because this thing speaks to me in such a way. And you know what? It's a found object. I'm just going to put it in the story. Now, obviously, in the article, you learned that it started that way and she ended up changing it significantly for publication and on and on. But I wish there had been a little bit more time spent on trying to find a resolution to that very specific thing. Because

I don't, I think a lot of people came away with very different opinions on that question. And it affected the reading of the piece, but no one's actually talking about that question to the degree that they should have. Does that make sense, what I'm saying? The specific question here is, if you write a short story or piece of fiction and you take something that a real person wrote on Facebook in this case, use their very specific words. words. Yeah. Can you do that, essentially? And, I mean, this passes, I mean, this should be considered, I mean, it's not just

thievery, like, there's many examples of this sort of thing being, or similar things being okay, right? Dan Brown won his lawsuit against the Holy Blood, Holy Grail guys, because he basically turned their book into the Da Vinci Code, right? He made a novel, a novelized version of it. I don't know that he took specific text, right? But one of the references that they have in the, or one of the quotes that they have in the piece,

that's from Larson herself, the fiction writer, said, it's, her letter wasn't art, it was informational, doesn't have market value. It's like language that we gleaned from menus, tombstones, and tweets.

That I found really compelling. I mean, to me, it's, like, if you took a hilarious menu from some one-off cracker barrel style restaurant and just use the menu itself in your short story, but change the name of the restaurant, is that okay? It seems to me like the answer is it's okay, especially if you're

making a commentary on the menu itself, right? Can we start our first ever press box fiction challenge? Can you get a short story out of lifting text from the Cracker Barrel menu? I think I could do it, man, or at least the golf tea game. that's in every cracker barrel at every table you know the thing all I remember

is the ignoramus part anyway we can move on I don't know maybe that's a really small part of this but I do feel like to me

there is a line somewhere but I don't feel like this crosses any particular line I feel like you and I know that the inexactitude of the line is the question right

but it just seems to me like like no legal entity should be entertaining this and the fact that there's all these lawsuits going back and forth just seems like entirely wrong. And I don't know.

It just sort of seems like I don't have a moral or an artistic or, you know, certainly not myself, a legal problem with the situation. It does seem like there's a sort of free market answer to this, which is like if someone stole your work and now you have the entire world watching you and they know the truth about it, you're allowed. You can publish your own thing, make your own story. about it or somehow monetize your Facebook post. I mean, that was sort of the point of the whole thing, right, is like socially monetizing the Facebook post, not literally with money, but sort of like garnering some sort of credibility from it, which didn't work. But I don't know. I mean, the holy blood, holy grow guys made a freaking killing off of Dan Brown. You know, they didn't need to sue them to be millionaires because of it. I mean, they made a lot of money because people bought that

book because they heard that it inspired the Da Vinci Code. I have an answer to your question. And we unfurl just a little bit more of the story there. Waits unfurl away. I got really specific really quick. No, no, no. But I think you've hit on one of if not the major issues here. So Sonia Larson is a fiction writer to recap. Don Dorlin is the woman who donated her kidney and wrote about it on Facebook.

When confronted by Dorlin, Sonia Larson's eventual response was, I think you're being a bad art friend. That's how Dorlin paraphrased it anyway. Meaning, if you and I are true friends, you will allow me to write fiction, even fiction inspired by your own personal experience and not get in the way. That's what you should allow me to do. Now, we learned something, though, David, later, which was about the actual deployment of kidney donation in the story. so sonia larsen did not just take this thing that someone she knew had done and use it as the jumping off point for a story she made a character uh and here's how colker describes it white wealthy and entitled the woman who gave the character in the story a kidney is not exactly an uncomplicated altruist she is a stranger to her own impulses unaware of how what she considers a selfless act also contains elements of intense unbridled narcissism In an early draft of the story, the donor character's name was Don, just like the real life, Don.

Now, Don Dorland didn't read the story for a while. Then she saw it on the website of the magazine American Short Fiction, where Sonia Larson, the author, was pictured in a side-by-side photograph with Raymond Carver. So while we're establishing the emotional stakes here, somebody has written a story based on something I did or inspired by something I did. and then I see them side by side with Raymond Carver on a website. Dorlin finally reads the short story, and she finds out that in the story, the fictional kidney donor has written a letter to the recipient of the kidney that sounds, as you pointed out a moment ago, David,

a lot like the open letter she posted on Facebook. Then, and a couple of things happened before this happens, but we'll just cut right here. She hears an early audio version. of the story. And the letter in the story isn't just like the letter she posted on Facebook. It has word for word similarities. Meaning her friend has taken this letter and inserted parts of it into the story directly.

Yeah. Which really brings us to, I think, the moral and legal arguments here. Can we do the moral argument first, which I think is actually bigger? Sure. Somebody takes something, takes something. take something, take something you have done. Let's say somebody in your life, David, that knows you, says, I want to make you,

I want to take something you've done and make it the subject in an unflattering piece of fiction. There's going to be a David Shoemaker-style character in here. Dang. Okay. It does the things you did. And it makes you look really bad. And they're not even going to really tell you about it before.

beforehand, you're going to kind of be left to maybe discover it at some point. How do you feel about that? Just morally speaking, before we get at this. This is so, I feel like I'm discovering as we discuss this. I have issues because as you're, when you, as you're asking that question, all I can feel is the dread of someone like describing me in a physically unflattering light. You know, someone just like writing a story where they're just like, David walked in his love handles on full display. Or like, you know, yeah, I mean, listen, it's a bad deal. It doesn't, no one would accept that.

No one wants this to happen, right? There'd be very few people on Earth who would even be like, ha, ha, ha, I take that in good spirit, especially if someone's ridiculing you for something that turns out to be, where the world sort of agrees that it's ridiculous, right? Nobody would really do that. guess there's a moral conundrum there. But I think as far as the morality goes, there's a really interesting aspect comparing the moral and the legal conundrums, I guess. And I'm using legal in a very, very loose sense here. To portray her unflatteringly raises the sort of moral calamity, right?

But to me, it like equally lowers the legal calamity. Right? The more that you like have, the more that you make something, the more that you like instill an opinion on something, you know, the more you like fictionalize the stakes of this thing, the less I have in, I feel like there's like a legal, there's like a legal problem.

You know, if I saw a, I mean, obviously, if I saw a, who's a good example, if I saw like a Glenn Beck posting on Facebook and put it in a story and I was just like, and that was, and the story was the story of the Glenn Beck thing. Look at it,

look at this smart. prophet saying this thing. There's no moral problem there because Glenn Beck would probably think it was complimentary, but there is a legal problem there because I'm just sort of like, very straight, you know, directly fictionalizing a thing. But if I turn him into like a farce and everyone in the, the whole story is about how ridiculous he is. And obviously the story is much bigger than this one quote. That seems like not problematic at all to me. But it does, it's probably going to be super offensive to Glenn Beck. And if I'm a friend or relation of his, then there's a moral problem there, I guess. Yeah. I mean, it gets to like, this is what

fiction writers would say that they do. They're not just making everything up out of their head. They're seeing things in real life. They're seeing things in real life that are uncomfortable, and then they're taking that and put in making it fiction. And sometimes that might really suck if you're the person who happens to be the inspiration for that, but that's what we do, right? That is essentially the defense in this case.

That's what fiction writers do. And have done historically. I mean, obviously. It's all fiction, basically. Yes. If the internet existed in, you know, the entire 20th century, I'm sure we'd have a lot of people who were, like, claiming passive ownership of, like, Cheever and Carver and, you know, Hemingway short stories. Hemingway, I mean, that's actually out there. But, like, you know, I mean, this would not be novel except for the fact that we, people have access to complain about these things and to be offended by these things in different ways.

That's true. That's true. or the inspiration can actually speak up. Yes. And fiction writers have done it about friends, acquaintances, partners, former partners since the beginning of time. So here's the question that you got to earlier. If you are not just looking at a person and finding inspiration in them, but taking a very specific thing they published on Facebook and inserting parts of it into your story. So there's the legal question here. Here's the moral question or the, I guess, the non-legal question. Haven't you kind of failed as a fiction writer at that point?

When you're saying like, I'm just going to take your words and put it in here, like, I can't fictionalize this. I'm just going to take what you actually wrote and place it into my fiction, like I'm putting a garnish on the meal before the restaurant serves it. Yeah, I think the menu question is a real one, though. I mean, I think ideally, yes, you can, someone can judge that someone has failed as a fiction writer, but I don't think that if they haven't fictionalized it significantly and sufficiently, whatever your personal bar may be, but I don't think that there's like a real legal distinction there, right? I mean, I can tell. But what about the non-legal distinction? Like if I'm just, let's say, let's say I want to write a character like David Shoemaker.

Like I'm going to do you, man, I'm mad at you and or I find your behavior in some way repulsive. And I not only write that and make that up, but then I pull specific Facebook posts or emails you sent me and just pull your language and insert it into my story. Well, I think emails is different. I mean, I do. I think that part of the reason why I have a little bit of moral ambivalence about this whole thing is that I feel like we wouldn't be having this conversation

if this was Glenn Beck or whoever else, if this was a public figure, right? And I feel like by the nature of her making these Facebook posts, posts, even if it's to a select audience, you sort of are turning yourself into a public figure. I mean, the whole point, the whole, it's, it's there, if not explicitly, like, as implicitly in all caps, bold letters as it could be. She wanted credit. She wanted to be, she wanted celebrity for doing, for doing what she did.

She got mad when people didn't celebrate her, you know, I feel like she's sort of, not sort of, I feel like she sort of, I feel like she public figured herself. Is that a thing I can say? But isn't like, then we're all public figures, the moment. I feel like if you can take anything I say on this podcast and make fun of it, and I don't, and I would be really hurt. But if like somebody else did it. But you and I are nominally public figures,

but if our parents are on Facebook posting about their grandkids, are we okay with our parents being public figures? If our parents start groups. Our parents do not know how to do that. Yeah. If our parents were more computer literate than we are, than they are. because that's really what this is, right?

My dad's a preacher. Okay, but he's also a public figure. But I'm saying that these are people who are, so the moment you start a private Facebook group and start posting things to it, to a group of people you know and that you've invited, you were essentially saying, I'm just asking the question. I don't know if I have a great opinion on this.

But that's the point where you're saying, this is kind of fair game. This stuff is not only stuff you're going to gossip about with your friends and say, eh, that Brian, look, what he's doing there on Facebook, but you're going to say, okay, these are kind of public domain. These words are public domain because essentially that's how it was treated here, at least the first time around. I mean, listen, this is a, you're talking about, have you failed or succeeded as an artist or as a fiction writer? I mean, this story is good and readable and everything else because it is a

absolute calamity. It's an absolute just explosion of, well, I don't, don't know worst case scenario, but like inth case scenario iterations of all of these questions, right? I mean, it doesn't shock me that someone wrote a story in the first draft. They didn't even bother changing the person's name or the thing that they said. And it doesn't, you know, eventually it got changed that sort of beside the point. It doesn't shock me that someone wrote the story at all. It doesn't shock me that the person on the other end exists and that they were upset about it. But, you know, when you, when the degree to which these personalities collide and then the fact that the short story got selected for a citywide reading program in Boston is just like

I mean it's what a and then they got pulled because I mean there's so many things that happened in this New York Times magazine story that well I hate to say it or better than fiction yes there are a lot of reveals here it does it does read it does read very much like fiction so what happens is we mentioned that there was a level of that looked like the letters that the letter that was wound up that was going to be distributed in this Boston citywide reading thing had been changed. So it was not the exact wording from Facebook. But then Don Dorland found an earlier draft of the story, which happened to have been published as an audiobook, which contain similar language, including some of the same words.

We also, because their lawsuits were filed in this case, Don Dorlin was able to find the messages that Sonia Larson and her friends had sent about her. Here's one of them. I think I'm done with the kidney story Sonia Larson wrote in a text, but I feel nervous about sending it out because it literally has sentences that I've verbatim grabbed from Don's letter on Facebook. I've tried to change it, but I can't seem to. That letter was just too damn good.

I'm not sure what to do, dot, dot, dot feeling morally compromised slash like a good artist but a shitty person. okay here's another one uh this is in a chat message from larsen dude i could write pages and pages more about dawn or at least about this particular narcissistic dynamic especially as it relates to race this the woman is a gold mine exclamation point so at least as it relates to colker's story we're not just talking about here's what i think happened there are now documents of this stuff And by the way, I want to line up with Steve Allman, who is a fiction writer himself. He wrote this, and I thought this was really perceptive.

I feel implicated. I have behaved in the same ways as Don and Sonia and other writers quoted in the piece. In addition to being friendly, loyal, hopeful, and ambitious, I have been an am insecure, insincere, narcissistic, needy, and vindictive. You wouldn't have to look very hard at my text messages or emails to find evidence. of these qualities. Meaning, aren't we all, isn't, isn't what is so appealing about this story for journalists and writers is we're all kind of this person.

We've sent notes like this. Oh, yeah. About then people that we might be nice to or whatever. And it was funny, I was thinking about the journalistic equivalent of this, because in journalism, you probably wouldn't have somebody like, I'm going to write a story about David Shoemaker. I guess that would happen once in a while on. flattering story. But I think you would see these kind of qualities come out when David

Shoemaker wrote a story that I really wanted to write. Yeah. There was territory I thought was my territory. I didn't think he had the right to write that story or I was going to go right there and then he beat me to it, right? And gain some level of fame or a claim for doing that. I just think, you know, it's a little different than what we're talking about here, about ownership of stories, but there is a kind of journalistic ownership of stories that would bring out many of these same qualities. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, and someone pointed that out,

God, I forgot who, and I apologize, but someone pointed that out online on Twitter that it was, you know, you hate to say it because it does feel like you're having a sort of legal conversation, right? And even the moral one where the fiction writer might be, might not be on the right side of that one either. but it does so it's hard you don't want to be the person pointing fingers but it does feel like there's an undercurrent of this which is i've i have presented myself as a fiction writer

i have imagined myself as a fiction writer for so much of my life and someone just and that don't have much to show for it and someone just took a thing that i put on facebook and was an amazingly successful fiction writer partly be you know in using that you know it's It feels like there's a failure on the part of the poster, you know, and it's not hard to imagine that that plays a big part in this. There are parts of the story we're just not going to get here today. I would just encourage everyone to read this. There's a whole accusation of being a white savior as part of this story. There are all kinds of notes here. I do want to leave you with a few thoughts, David. One, as I said earlier, is about the squeamishness among media members whenever they encounter a story that's about writers or the media. Yeah. Justifiably. It's always so funny to me.

And I say this as somebody who writes about the media, so maybe I'm a little defensive about this. But I feel like there's one person who used to send me notes once in one and said, I never like stories like the kind you write, but I enjoyed what you wrote the other day. Kind of half a backhanded compliment. I don't like reading what you have chosen to devote your life to.

But I like that thing you came up with the other day. Yes. And I always find that so funny because media members are willing to pry into the lives of anybody. Celebrities, politicians, football coaches, whomever it is. We're willing to stick our noses in there and reveal all the stuff. But as soon as stuff is revealed about other media members, well, I don't know. This seems a little, it seems a little incestuous. Well, it also implies a sort of, you know, newspaper section template.

to your writing that I think most writers would bristle at too, unless you're doing gamers, like play-by-play recaps, I think almost every journalist would be like, would bristle at the idea that you would say, I don't like things of that sort, right? Because every single one of them would say, no, my piece stands on its own.

I'm not strictly a film the blank writer. I'm a, you know, I'm a journalist, but I'm a writer, I'm a writer, you know, every piece stands on its own and should be, you know, judged as such. This was a story of competing headlines, David. The web headline of Culker's New York Times Magazine piece was, who is the bad art friend? The print headline was the donor and the borrower, which is much more like magazine print headline. But let's face it, much worse headline than who is the bad art friend. The bad art friend is just so, you know,

appealing. It just asks, you have to know what an art friend is. You desperately need to know what an art friend is because it's such a, they're two of the most basic words in the English language. And you put them together and you're just like, what I need to understand this. It reminds me, whenever you see New Yorker pieces online and like the headline on the web copy is this like very keyword rich, provocative headline. And then you go all the way down, you know, at the very bottom it said this ran in the New Yorkers so-and-so issue as the unbeliever. you know, something just very, very august, but not quite as clickable. Totally the case here. Then I want to call your attention to the entire secondary.

By the way, the donor and the borrower is. It works, right? I mean, it makes sense. I feel like it's half to, I feel like it's 50% there. I mean, I feel like thematically it's there, but I feel like whoever did that headline must have just stared at borrower synonyms for 20 minutes before they were just like, fine, I'll just go with borrower. because it doesn't have the literary flourish that you would want it to have,

especially for this story. It's the right zone. I think if they got that right, it might have actually been better than the art friend, but we'll see. You know what an editor, when you pitch an idea to an editor and they don't really like the idea, but they go, great zone. Yeah. I say great zone to that headline.

I do want to call your attention to the entire secondary journalistic economy of the bad art friend. Let me just give you a few headlines. The Guardian. let's not kid ourselves. We are all the bad art friend. Okay. From Slate, we are all the bad art friend. Okay.

From Jezabelle for the love of bad art friends. And Vanity Fair with the think piece, why Facebook may be the true bad art friend. Congratulations, David, on contributing yet another bad art friend. I can't wait to see how we title this podcast. All right, David, it's time of the overworked, Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are

always gratefully received. David, a really wild story from NBC's Tom Winter. 18 former NBA players have been arrested and charged federally for defrauding the NBA's health and welfare benefit plan. What on earth? This is the wild story. One of those players, Charged was former Celtic Tony Allen. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. Hopefully Tony Allen's lawyer is also first team all defense. Or defense. Thanks to John Sloan and legal minefield for that.

After looking at the list of players, David, who were indicted, which also includes Ruben Patterson and Glenn Big Baby Davis. The Kobe stopper, Ruben Patterson. You remember that? The Kobe stopper, Rubin Patterson. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. ladies and gentlemen of the jury, let's remember some guys. Thanks to BP for that one.

And this week's winner, David, which arrived just after we taped the pod last Monday. Facebook went down for five hours. Oh, yeah. Which provided five hours of fantastic Facebook Twitter joke material. It was an overword Twitter joke to write. Let's keep Facebook down until we reach herd immunity. Thanks to Grooons for that one. We would have also accepted a pick of MySpace founder Tom Anderson with a joke.

He knew you'd come crawling back. That's from Alexander Frost and Elliot Zagman. And finally, this one, Mark Zuckerberg has concluded his research into rating every woman on Earth and has now shut down Facebook. Thanks to Luke B. If you think Mark Zuckerberg found a greater threat to his empire than the WinkleVye, Congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, time for the notebook dump. We got a note from listener David Turner.

Do you plan to cover the Urban Meyer saga on the pod? Feels like there's an extra level of media interest coverage than I'd expect from the basics of the story. Feels like there might be a media referendum on Meyer and not as much on the actions. Can I tell you, first of all, I'm glad that we're talking about this, but second of all, the relief, the feeling of relief that I get just from hearing that question laid out in the way that it is. I first my wife told me about this story, right? She, she would do about it before I did.

She definitely fell in the pro-urban camp for the record. Okay. Just in turn. A dwindling camp, we might say, especially online. No, in the sort of like, why are we talking about this camp? Oh, I got you. I got it. And I don't think it's a stretch.

to say that like the only reason she knew about it is because the conversation had transcended football already by that point right um and when i started trying to figure out the story i couldn't understand it it felt like there was such a huge piece missing that i was not privy to that i couldn't understand i literally i just could not wrap my head around the story i turned on the NFL network. And they were like earnestly showing the video from the bar of a woman dancing next to her on top of Urban Meyer and, you know, transposing that against the statement from Shad Khan, the Jaguar's owner about how he's lost faith, whatever, him as a coach and he, or Meyer had

squandered the faith that the team had in him or whatever it was. Called his conduct inexcusable. and which is fine. I mean, you can, if it's a press release and like, we're just going to let that be their answer and just sort of walk away, that's fine. But the degree to which it sort of kept rolling, I was like, is this?

I'm trying to, like, I was trying to think of what is the problem that we're not saying out loud? Because it does seem like there's not a lot of there there. Now, I guess it's so, at some point became clear that the, that maybe the bigger issue was not traveling home with your team, staying behind.

It is like comfortable environments of Ohio and hanging out, you know, the old stomping grounds and, you know, just sort of almost like he'd kind of turned his back on his team. And this is, and getting caught out doing it was sort of a huge slap in the face. And if the bigger story is Erud Myers lost the Jaguars locker room already, then that's a big story. And of course, a story like this is going to be covered in granular detail. but it seems weird

just that in 2021 that the NFL network and ESPN or whatever are like running or like showing this video like it's the Zapruder film like something that happens here is is somehow disqualifying to be a public figure when like

even if it were the worst possible reading of it it seems like I think most would assume that this doesn't really meet the bar of the worst things than NFL employee did this week this is what struck me about it. It felt like 10 years ago, this would have been an old Deadspin story. Yeah.

Deadspin would have posted the video. Mm-hmm. We all would have watched. They would have had the video because nobody else would have been interested in running the video. Exactly. We would have all watched the video.

We would have all been talking about Urban Meyer. But at least publicly, the mainstream press would have been like, I don't know if we can touch that. Yeah. I don't know, you know, I just, I don't know if there's an end there. Maybe then Meyer gets asked about it at a press conference. And he no comments it.

And that's the end of the story. I mean, it's a story, but it's not a big mainstream media story in the way this was. This went right to everybody. And it was so, and I'm not saying that in a scoldy way, but I just think it's very interesting that all of a sudden people are like, oh, this is a story for everybody. this is story for the NFL network. What? Like we're just, we're,

this is, this is a thing. And I think there are some, there are probably, I think the reason for this is, one, it's just undeniable, right?

In the age we live in, like, if everybody's seen it, you've just got to talk about it in some way or another. And there is just enough effect on the team stuff. To get over the bar at certain media organizations. Jaguars had lost the game. They're 0 and 4.

He does, as you say, did not travel home with the team on the team plane, which is very unusual. And then is pictured just having a good time. Now, we don't, you know, Urban Meyer going to bar and doing whatever he wants within reason is probably something we would say is okay. But in that moment, you could see the, you know, you could see a kind of way to connect that to,

well, he just doesn't want to be the coach of the Jaguars, right? He's just doing, he didn't fly home with the team. He's off doing it. this other thing. Okay. But I agree with you. It was striking. And I think I think the actual reason for this is there's this catch-all quality of people really don't like Urban Meyer for a whole lot of reasons. Yeah. There are Ohio State reasons when he was talking about these, there were these accusations of domestic violence against one of his assistants and the way he handled those. Lindsay Jones mentioned that in her athletic piece this week. There was Florida,

University of Florida where he was the coach. Team Aaron Hernandez played for. You can point to various football things. You can point people are just, and so I think it just quickly got brought into the, here is a way, you know, we don't like Urban Meyer. So of course we're going to talk about this. And I don't say that as a defense.

I just think that kind of answers your question of how it just went to the top of the list pretty quickly. I think for me this is one of those things. where, like, I was watching, I don't even know which ESPN show, I was watching, but Marcus Spears was just going off on Urban Meyer and talking, I mean, acting like this was the end of the world. And maybe just because it was one of the first things I watched,

but I guess, I guess I have my really simple complaint would be just like, this feels like a sort of issue where the question shouldn't be, is this a problem? But why is this a problem? Because anybody, because it seemed like it was really easy to pon, pontificate on how big a deal this is. But it doesn't seem, but, but I'm, but I was sort of just perplexed about like,

what specifically are you taking issue with? You know what I mean? If the issue is, is that he doesn't, that the narrative that he's, yes, we're all looking to get licks on urban mind, but more importantly, if he's, he never really wanted to be to coach the team,

he's not taking it seriously, like whatever, like those, those are real things. And I, and I, and if this is a symptom of that, then sure, but it does seem like, I, I just had a hard time hearing,

I mean, I didn't really hear people. saying that. Yeah. And to me, that is just a pretty compelling reading of this. You know, he didn't want to be the coach of the Jaguars. Really to begin with, but there was so much money and so much power offered to him that he kind of couldn't say no. Yeah. But he never got over the idea that he really didn't want to coach a team. And then when you see this, you're like, you know, it's like whenever we have the, I told Kevin Clark this the day, whenever we have a journalism scandal and somebody's just flagrantly violating the rules of journalism and was like, we're just not

listening to this person say they don't want to be a journalist anymore. Yeah. It's up to us to listen. I kind of think it's up to the ownership of the Jaguars say like, okay, we, we hear you. You don't want this job. So please let's let's come to some agreement. You don't want to be the coach here. And I think that's a perfectly valid reading of what happened. You didn't fly home with a team. You're doing this. You know cell phones are going to be out. There's just no way you don't know this. If you're in a bar and you know what's going to happen and you know this is going to be a big public just thing for the team, whatever the morality of it is, do you really want to be the coach of this team? I think that's a pretty compelling reading.

Yeah. And it's a good time. I mean, talking about press conferences or whatever else. I don't know if anybody said it, but I think that if that's the story, then this is a really great opportunity to ask that question. starting to start framing it you know like hey urban mire do you can do you promise that you'll be here at the you know for game one of next season just i mean i guess he won't answer can you commit right now to be you will be the coach if you're wanted back will you be the coach of the jacksonville jaguars yeah yeah i'd like to i'd uh i'd be interested in hearing that

question asked uh got a couple no more notes for you david all first of all we're done with the bit of the only in journalism words it's over. I'm killing the bit. I think we should have a replacement bit before we kill the bit, but that's okay. What's the replacement bit? No, I don't know. I don't know. Oh, I thought you had something.

No, not at all. No, I said, I said before we started the show, we could, we could lurch into other genres, but I'm guessing that our listenership is not interested in us litigating, like, only in, you know, the food service industry words. Yeah, my big problem is that people keep sending them to me, and I look at, at him, I go, that's amazing. And then I realized we did it like six weeks ago. I know. So the bit, the bid is over. RIP, the only in journalism word bid. We're now taking suggestions for new bits. So tweet those at Brian. I do have a complaint corner, though, for you. Journalism complaint corner. Oh, okay. So yesterday I'm reading the Sunday New York Times and the Sunday Los Angeles Times. Love reading newspapers as newspapers.

But the New York, the Sunday New York Times did something that has just been confound. me, which is four different sections of the Sunday paper begin with a full page photograph or illustration that includes no text. So we're in this age where newspaper pages have become really precious. Yes. Where newspapers have just become very expensive to buy and subscribe to. And I would like to do my part and subscribe to them. But why are we wasting entire pages on art in illustration when we could run like two full articles

on that page. And if we're going to do that once in the Sunday New York Times, so we have an awesome photo for Sunday styles or for arts and leisure, whatever it is,

then okay, I guess I'm in or at least I'll think about it, but like the Sunday review started with an Ezra Klein column except it was just the title of the column and just a generic illustration about politics.

It's just a waste of space. And that to me is, people who are saying like, we're going to make newspapers into art objects. Newspapers have become rare, so they need to be treated like a magazine. They need to be treated with this kind of, you know, with all these artistic possibilities. And I'm like, okay, I get that, but just how about some more articles? How about we not waste of space? I don't know.

I think that you can imagine the logic, though, right? of like as the one thing that we, I'm saying we as like the editors of a print edition of a newspaper have that someone's iPhone doesn't have is the ability to scale up, right? Like we can, like they can have this picture on their phone and they can zoom in with their little pinchy fingers, but they can't have a foldout newspaper size,

just photo that you could hang on the one. But that's the, that makes it feel so, it's like such a dinosaur, right? I mean, this is like, it's like the full color insert in Mad Magazine that you're going to like, like unfold and pin to your door. And I totally understand at the end of the printer of that mindset. Yeah. We got to go for it, baby.

Yeah. How many print newspapers are we going to have, you know, for how long is this going to go? So let's go for it. But I'm also like four sections, we just have a full thing. And let me tell you, the Sunday early times, their food section began with a full. full page of a photo of dates like the dates you eat

the dates that were poison and Raiders of the Lost Ark full page illustration and then David you open this eight page section and there was another full page photograph of dates so one quarter of the section

was date pictures like I just maybe one somebody is sitting there with two newspaper sized frames leaning against their kitchen walls saying like what can I do to really liven this place up? And now they have two date photos that they can throw up there. I've seen this same mindset I've got to tell you online as well. Because I read, sometimes I'll read the political columns in New York Magazine like Jonathan

Chate's column. And it used to be if Jonathan Chate had a major essay, it would have like the full art treatment, you know, not just like a little stock photo of Trump and then this. Now I feel like almost all of them have the full-blown art treatment. And then the column is 750 words long. Yeah. Or 1,200 words long. It's like, are we just doing big art treatments for everything now? I ask you as an art director.

And sometimes hard to differentiate, you know, a week out, how long something's going to be and how much time the art department should put into it. But I think you're right that in the past, some websites, not the ringer. We've always been all in. But I think there's some websites, many websites have aired on the, side of minimalism. And I mean, look back at Grantland and they, when they knew something big was coming when they had a, you know, hot shot writer writing 8,000 words on the history of water slides,

they would like send it, they would find a freelance illustrator that would just blow it out of the park with a water park. But that, but, you know, it takes a, it takes some runway. And that's one thing that just the world doesn't always, I think less and less, we have, the time to really let things marinate on the edit desk. We have less time to marinate but I feel it's a condition of the end days of print that we're leaning into it a little bit more.

Perhaps just a smitch too much. I love ours. I love art. Art makes my newspaper and my website look really, really cool. But let's just reconsider. A bit we will never kill, it's time for David Schumacher guess is a strain pun headline. Yeah. Last Monday's headline about the dollar tree stocking more expensive items was buck up. That was one of the worst pun headlines we've ever had. Not in the sense it was so strained. It was just kind of uncreative.

We got many better headlines from readers. Chris Almeida, our friend and Joseph B.N. Khan suggested passes the buck. Yeah. Because more expensive. J.C.M. suggests the buck doesn't stop here. That's great. Good one.

From James M for a few dollars more. Like that. And from Reginald, dollar comma generally. Wow. Good job, Reginald. A bunch of fantastic submissions this week, but I want to give you a headline, David, from our good pal Michael Lev.

It's from the Seattle Times. And it is very timely. It's about Thursday night's game in which the Seattle Seahawks lost to the Rams by nine points, nine points, and quarterback Russell Wilson ruptured a tendon in his finger. So a bad night for the Seahawks, but have been interesting bad night in the sense they lost by nine points, and Russell Wilson ruptured a tendon in his finger. What was the Seattle Times' strained pun headline? No. I feel like maybe I'm spending too much time reading books. to my two and a half year old.

Is it, is it, um, I'm trying to think of like nine, nine, nine points and tendon, like the number 10. Russell Wilson is not number eight nor is he 11. So I'm a little bit confused, but I can't get past like eight, nine, ten. What's another word for a finger? Uh, digit. Mm. Nine.

Oh, nine digits. Nine, uh, nine. Mm, not nine digits. Lost by nine points. So that's not double digits, but... Oh, single digit loss. Single digit defeat. Single digit defeat, that's really good.

Really good work by the Seattle Times. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis, production magic by Erica Servantes. Coming Friday, our second how-to podcast. David, it's How to Be a Music Critic with the New Yorkers, Kalefa, I cannot wait to talk to him this week. Plus, David and I are back Monday with more lookworm takes about the media.

See you then, David. See you later, Brian.